Wednesday, May 5, 2021

12 Useful WordPress Plugins for Page Layouts

When it comes to plugins for laying out the pages on a WordPress site, WPBakery Page Builder is hard to beat. This easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder with over 200 unique addons helps developers and novices alike create just about any layout imaginable.

For users looking to modify just one page in a specific way, this powerful page builder is probably overkill.

That’s why we’ve scoured CodeCanyon for the most useful and best WordPress page layout plugins and come up with these 12 that meet a variety of needs.

1. Essential Grid WordPress Plugin

If you’re looking for just the right grid to display your blog posts, photos, products, testimonials, social media streams, services or whatever else you have in mind, the Essential Grid WordPress layout Plugin has you covered.

This multipurpose grid enables you to display any content on your WordPress site in your choice of elegant grid form.

First decide what source you want to use for your grid entry. Then customise the grid by choosing from three available styles, before selecting the required number of columns and rows and setting the spacing for the items. From there, add any number of skins available to customise the look further.

Essential Grid WordPress PluginEssential Grid WordPress PluginEssential Grid WordPress Plugin

Notable features:

  • over 25 example skins included
  • widely varied content sources possible, including images, YouTube, and HTML5 self-hosted video
  • various animation styles available
  • responsive and mobile optimised
  • and more

Essential Grid WordPress Plugin is an engaging and visually appealing way to show off content on your WordPress page.

Customer webdesigndmc says:

"It's a great plugin and they have even greater support."

2. FlatFolio

FlatFolio is another great option for those looking for an alternative grid layout.

Aside from being highly customisable, the plugin has the additional benefit of offering both Carousel and Slider functions as well.

You can customise the grid with logos, captions, coloured overlays, titles and subtitles, hover shadows, and more.

FlatFolioFlatFolioFlatFolio

Notable features:

  • preview feature
  • carousel and slider features
  • unlimited item formats
  • various overlay effects
  • and more

For creatives and other users wanting to show off their visual content, FlatFolio is a versatile and easy-to-use WordPress page content plugin. 

Customer stefkouf says:

"Great plugin, very quick solution to my problem."

3. Sidebar and Widget Manager

If you’ve ever wished for the freedom to place a widget in the content area of your WordPress site page, the Sidebar and Widget Manager is a worthy contender.

The plugin allows you complete control of where you add widgets to the site’s pages by expanding the placement possibility beyond the sidebar and footer area to the page content area.

Sidebar and Widget ManagerSidebar and Widget ManagerSidebar and Widget Manager

Notable features:

  • drag-and-drop grid manager
  • vertical or horizontal widget alignment
  • ability to display or hide any widget on any page
  • supports any kind of content
  • and more

Being able to add widgets to any area of a WordPress site page with the Sidebar and Widget Manager plugin is a great way to build your own unique page layout.

Customer JohnDoe_VI says:

"If you want to create a custom layout of a WordPress site, this is the plugin you want to have in your tool chest."

4. Real3D FlipBook WordPress Plugin

If you've you ever wanted to offer that book or magazine experience of flipping pages backwards and forwards, then this layout manager is worth a look.

It's certainly a different way to layout pages and the big advantage of this WordPress plugin is that it is 100% HTML5 meaning that Adobe Flash is not needed.

Easy to use and customisable for you to create interactive pages.

Real3D FlipBook WordPress PluginReal3D FlipBook WordPress PluginReal3D FlipBook WordPress Plugin

Notable features:

  • Create flip-books directly from PDF files
  • 100% HTML5 (No Flash!)
  • Light/Dark skins
  • Font Awesome or Material Icons
  • Responsive mode
  • Optimised for mobile

The flip book layout can be changed based on device type. Besides the standard double page view, there's a single page view that's used on mobile devices as it offers a better reading experience on smaller screens whilst retaining the 3D flipping effect and shadows.

5. Stupid Simple Testimonials

The Stupid Simple Testimonials plugin makes it super easy to add testimonials or quotes to your page layout. Using a simple shortcode that can be inserted in pages, posts, and widgets, the plugin features eight unique ways to customise your page layout.

Stupid Simple TestimonialsStupid Simple TestimonialsStupid Simple Testimonials

Notable features:

  • grid layout automatically adjusts to match the total number of testimonials
  • six unique colour schemes provided to match your theme
  • ability to divide your testimonials into categories for easy management
  • ability to edit using the standard WordPress editor
  • and more

The Stupid Simple Testimonials plugin is a straightforward way to alter your page layout and will integrate your testimonials or quotes into your site in a crisp, professional fashion.

6. UberMenu

What’s a great site without an equally great menu layout to help your visitors navigate your content seamlessly?

The UberMenu plugin is designed to facilitate just such easy navigation. The highly customisable and responsive plugin offers seven main menus and several submenu options to suit a wide variety of tastes and needs.

UberMenuUberMenuUberMenu

Notable features:

  • easy to add images and descriptions
  • Google Maps
  • choice of 18 layout variables
  • fully responsive and compatible with mobile and touch-enabled devices
  • extensive user-friendly documentation
  • and more

UberMenu works out of the box with the WordPress menu system, making it simple to get started and create gorgeous menus quickly and easily.

Customer lariosn says:

"UberMenu is simply fantastic and its support is just amazing."

7. WordPress Pro Events Calendar

If you’re looking for a clean and elegant way to keep your customers, clients, or followers updated on your public appearances, then adding the WordPress Pro Events Calendar plugin to your WordPress page layout might just be the right solution for you. 

WordPress Pro Event CalendarWordPress Pro Event CalendarWordPress Pro Event Calendar

Notable features:

  • responsive layout
  • let users submit events from the front-end
  • add special dates to your calendar like holidays
  • import events from an ICS feed or Facebook

Customer DrDanHall says:

"This calendar system is the best for the money. I had used EventOn but the constant add-on cost was unbearable. Pro Event calendar includes all the features I had for much less. Great system."

8. Justified Image Grid—Premium WordPress Gallery

Justified Image Grid is a powerful and responsive WordPress gallery plugin, expertly designed to showcase images in the most beautiful and authentic way.

Whether you specialize in capturing magical wedding days, creative designs and innovations, expressive portraits, extraordinary architecture, or journalistic exploration, it's true that your photos tell a unique story and deserve to be presented in a way to maximise their impact.

Justified Image Grid - Premium WordPress GalleryJustified Image Grid - Premium WordPress GalleryJustified Image Grid - Premium WordPress Gallery
  • Notable features:
  • Responsive gallery
  • Retina ready
  • Special effects on-the-fly
  • Gallery support for YouTube, Vimeo and self-hosted
  • Video gallery support
  • Right-click content protection

9. Media Grid

Media Grid is a terrific WordPress page template plugin that allows you to create unlimited responsive, filterable and paginated portfolios quickly and easily.

Create your own layout and mix any media to create unique galleries. The plugin allows for a high degree of customisation to every element of your gallery. 

Notable features:

  • unlimited layout-free portfolios
  • visual, drag-and-drop grid builder
  • ability to create grids using any public post on your website 
  • one-click grid cloning system

Customer seamusberkeley says:

"This is the best image plugin available—lots of flexibility and dynamic organization of images. Customer support is responsive too—Luca replied to questions promptly."

10. Templatera

Created by the authors of the WPBakery Page Builder, Templatera is a WordPress template manager that allows users to create, manage and set access to templates based on the user role or content type.

TemplateraTemplateraTemplatera

Notable features:

  • easy content reuse across templates
  • edit content across templates from one central place
  • ability to import or export templates in XML format
  • and more

User rikfik says:

"This plugin is awesome! It saves me a lot of time build my pages. Great job. Thanks."

11. Quform

Quform is an advanced WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and easily build multiple forms.

This drag-and-drop form builder is feature-rich, easy to use, and has a wide variety of templates that enable you to build all kinds of forms ranging from complex quotes to booking forms and simple contact forms, without ever writing any code.

A few clicks and you have fully functional forms—it’s that simple. 

QuformWordPress Form Builder QuformWordPress Form Builder QuformWordPress Form Builder

Notable features:

  • responsive forms
  • drag-and-drop form elements
  • file uploads, sent as attachments or saved to the server (or both)
  • live preview while building

User adynsol says:

"Amazing script, easy to install, very well documented and with a ton of configs. Nice work."

12. DHWCPage

DHWCPage is a template builder that helps you create any layout for your WooCommerce page quickly and easily. The plugin, which requires WPBakery Page Builder to work, is easy to install and configure and requires no coding skills. 

DHWCPageDHWCPageDHWCPage

Notable features:

  • supports WooCommerce shortcodes
  • works with any theme
  • create a single product by category or product type
  • display the product description and review separately

User mydiamondlive says:

"A must have plugin for eCommerce websites that want to put extra design features for products and to stand out from the rest."

Conclusion

These 12 plugins just scratch the surface of page layout plugins available at Envato Market. So if none of them catch your fancy, there are plenty of other great options there to hold your interest.

You can also discover some of the best WordPress plugins in our free course:

And if you're interested in learning more about WPBakery and other WordPress page builders, check out these articles:

And if you want to improve your skills building WordPress sites, check out the ever so useful free WordPress tutorials we have on offer.

Editorial Note: This post has been updated with contributions from Johnny Winter. Johnny is a staff writer with Envato Tuts+.

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